The cleaning of subsea conduits, such as strakes and fairings, is currently performed by a remotely operated vehicle (“ROV”) manipulator using a water blaster. This is a slow and inefficient method.
Strakes and fairings must be continuously cleaned to maintain their vortex induced vibration (“VIV”) suppression performance. The invention described herein provides the ability to simultaneously clean opposite sides of a subsea conduit using an ROV, thereby precluding the need to circumnavigate the entire outer circumference of the subsea conduit with the ROV, as shown in FIG. 6. The invention described herein provides a faster method of cleaning subsea conduits, such as strakes and fairings, resulting in less vessel time and less remotely operated vehicle (“ROV”) time, thereby achieving a cost savings.
The invention disclosed herein is particularly well suited to cleaning vertically oriented subsea conduits because it employs brushes comprising abrasive elements rotatable about an axis that is substantially parallel to the axis of the conduit being cleaned, as shown in FIG. 6. This permits an ROV comprising the invention disclosed herein to ascend or descend in a direction substantially parallel to the axis of the conduit being cleaned, while the abrasive brush elements rotate against the outer surface of the conduit on multiple sides of such conduit, as shown in FIG. 6. This provides a major advantage in time required to clean such subsea conduit over an apparatus that employs only a small single brush.